Breathe Through Me
by AGirlAndABeast
Summary: Sanrion AU – Hospitalized in a mental asylum for many years, and under the care of two torturous Doctors, a young woman frequently escapes to a better world she built for herself. Only, cracks have formed in its walls and now she's faced with two very twisted and unsafe worlds-the imagined, and the real.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Breathe Through Me (1/?)  
**Author:** Demelza  
**Disclaimer:** Game of Thrones and its characters belong to GRRM and HBO. I'm just borrowing them here for a little while. No infringements of any copyrights are intended.  
**Rating:** O18  
**Summary: **Sanrion AU – Hospitalized in a mental asylum for many years, and under the care of two torturous Doctors, a young woman frequently escapes to a better world she built for herself. Only, cracks have formed in its walls and now she's faced with two very twisted and unsafe worlds-the imagined, and the real.  
**Author's Note: **This is kind of a hard one to write a note for, without giving away the end plot. Suffice it to say, as dark as it is, I've kept the chapters short and will aim to post two at each update and get them out as quickly as I can so that Sansa gets her freedom (and a happy ever after).**  
****Author's Note 2:** This deals with dissociative and avoidance disorders, a combination of which I suffer from myself. I've not taken the Hollywood route in writing the disorders, rather I've written an exaggerated version of how I've personally lived with them through the years. That said, I hope I tackle them in a respectful manner.

I

Lying on the gurney in the cold isolation room, a blanket cover her from feet to her chest, she stared blankly up at the white, tiled ceiling. Her flesh burned where it had been sliced, each cut deliberately placed and deep enough to only inflict pain and never kill. For years the treatments committed by the father and son Doctors hadn't broken through the defenses she'd built up. But the months past - she didn't know exactly how many - had seen cracks form, had seen their horrors bleed into the life of safety she'd long escaped to.

As she lay there, mindlessly shifting her gaze from one black speck on the ceiling to the next, she began to feel herself being pulled back to the surface. The cuts in her stomach and shoulders began to scream. She blinked out the tears that welled in her eyes, forced her gaze back to the first black speck and found the path she always followed. But her eyes soon flicked to a speck a tile over, down to the left, up to the right, across two tiles, down a third.

Panic made her heart race.

She wasn't supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in there. In the safe world where she was happy with a wonderful, loving family in a castle surrounded by snow, and a great tree with a white trunk and blood-red leaves adorning its branches.

They hated her now. They all hated her. Mother, brothers and sister. The King and his Queen-Regent mother. Guilt and grief, she felt the flat side of a cold, stinging blade as it struck her bare back over and over. She wanted to be free, but the hate of a million people who were meant to love her screamed at her instead and she couldn't fucking breathe. She tried and tried to take in a breath, but her chest felt pinned down, the joy and the hope being squeezed out of her.

But the creak and groan of the great doors resounded in her head and then came his voice, "What is the meaning of this?"

Through blurred eyes she saw him, short in stature, hair the color of gold, and he commanded attention. He'd never existed here before today. For some time now the events of this twisted version of her world played out without him. When he spoke to the King and made his commands she felt a peace that she'd forgotten had once resided here for thousands of years.

He came to her, hand out-stretched, head bowed in reverence for her.

She wanted to utter her thanks to him for saving her, she fought to say the words, but she was ever loyal to this new, hateful world. And so it pulled her away from him and down dark alleyways filled with terror, bitter manipulation and an endless emotional pain.

This was not the world she had built.

It was theirs.

The incisions in her body pulled her left and right, slashed at her once happy life, tore at her very soul.

She was beckoned then. Beckoned to see the King off before the Battle of the Blackwater. Before she saw him her gaze found his. The stranger who'd never had a place in this world, but who somehow now did. His voice was kind, but hers was wrought with the hate they wanted her to feel.

She would never let anyone in, least of all kin to the King who beat, humiliated and tormented her.

This was their world.

In a beat, a fight for the peace she yearned for, she heard herself promise she would pray for him. But their hate twisted her heart; the darkness within wanted him to be brought down by the invading forces, just as she wanted it for the King.

And oh, that King. He was as sure and cocky as he was cruel and unrepentant with his repugnant abhorrence for the self-proclaimed True Heir that threatened to steal his crown.

He was just like them. Made of venomous hate.

She tried then, between one beat and the next, to pull herself free. For a moment she glimpsed the white tiles and the infinite black specks that had once trekked a path through the safe world she found refuge in.

But their world, their darkening world that was fast replacing the one of solitude she'd built within, pulled her back in like a suffocating straitjacket.


	2. Chapter 2

II

She was seated in the corner on a hard, wooden seat in her tiny, white-walled room when she found her way back to herself. Her lips parted with a soft inhale, her eyes flickering to the strip of amber light coming in underneath the door.

Was it evening now, or early morning again?

A glance to her right, she saw that the wall was blank. It was early morning.

She rose to her feet with care, the incisions on her torso pulling with each movement. She didn't wince, only felt the trickle of warmth as one of them broke open and bled down into her belly button.

She reached for the special pen they let her have where it sat atop her dresser, clutched onto it like it was her whole world.

Her bare feet made a noise like walking on tacky glue as she stepped over to the wall.

Her eyes darting across the blank wall, she could see the city. She could see the Red Keep, and all the houses and merchant buildings that surrounded it. Rows upon rows of buildings, and then there was the one that meant something to her.

With careful strokes, she began to draw.

Black lines to and fro, up and down, left to right, she made them all connect, made them take form. It didn't matter that they would take this from her, that they would photograph and erase it and pretend like it never existed; it existed to her - it existed because she was walking the great floor of it, over massive tiles and amidst a crowd of people that hated her on either side of her, the vile King leading her towards the waiting stairs.

Stroke by stroke, the image she drew came to life.

She gasped suddenly, hand lingering over the space where he was never meant to have stood. That had been the King's place in the world she had built for herself. But it was different now. Wrong.

Who was he? This man, the King's uncle that had never existed before?

She stepped closer to the wall, leaned against it and let her head drop. Her eyes drifting shut, she let herself go back. Just for a moment, no more. She raced through that life, the one they'd thrust upon her, through the wedding she couldn't reject, the mortifying celebration dinner, and finally to his bed chambers where they stood alone.

His soulful eyes found hers and brought her back from duty. "I won't share your bed. Not until you want me to."

They were about cruelty, nothing more. But this man, her husband in this hell, fought against all that they wanted him to be.

She pulled herself away from the wall, breaking out of his bedchambers and away from the candlelight and back into darkness. Eyes shifting along the lines she'd drawn, she stepped back and mentally traced her way from the ragged sketch of herself, across the tiled floors, up the stairs and to him.

Her husband.

His faced was scarred, his eyes filled with misery. He'd not wanted the marriage any more than she had.

She moved back to the wall, stared at the man from their world. Finally finding a breath, she whispered a hoarse, "Tyrion" as a tear leaked down her cheek.


	3. Chapter 3

III

She lay on her bed soon afterwards, gaze fixed on the image she had drawn from their world. Tyrion's eyes stared back at her.

"I promise you one thing, my lady: I won't ever hurt you."

The breath caught in her chest and she let her eyes drift shut with the perfect image of him in mind.

He was hated in their world as much as she was, and as she let herself slip back there she told herself she would fight. She would fight against their world and would rebuild her own, stone by precious stone, in one defiant act of strength after another.

They were walking along the stone path of the King's Landing castle gardens, exchanging only light-hearted conversation. She was telling him how-in the world she'd built-her sister would cut a hole in her mattress and put sheep dung in there, sew it up, and she'd never be the wiser to it until she could smell it; and then they sent a messenger to interrupt them.

She wanted to hold onto that moment. Onto the peace he'd brought back to her.

But they were stronger.

Mother and her Brother were dead. The King and his Grandfather had sent their orders to have them slaughtered like dogs at a wedding.

And she fell into herself, crestfallen and so sure she would never be able to face this world of theirs.

This broken place, filled with murder and brutality, was every bit of their making and it yanked her back to the surgical theater, where she had been stripped bare and strapped to a gurney.

Crying without a sound, she heard the Son sing a song she didn't know. His voice was cheerful, smooth like butter, a sign of his young age.

She wasn't meant to be here.

She wanted to scream, but while present she wasn't in control. The one who was had suppressed her, told her to stay back because no human, ever, should ever experience what was about to be done to her. But she knew they were wrong; the other patients here screamed at all hours, they cried and begged and prayed for an out.

None came though. Not for them.

She had an out once. She'd had a castle surrounded by snow, a family that loved her, and a world of adventures that never brought her harm.

"Well," the Son said suddenly, and as he stepped in close to her she could smell what she could only describe as an old tree near a grassy stream. His face was above hers, face masked, head covered with a surgical cap. He pulled down his mask to grin at her, "Back for more, are we?"

In her mind she screamed for him to kill her. She begged for an end. But all that happened was a tear leaked out and she felt it's every, scratching movement as it rolled down her cheek.

"That's a yes then," he chuckled, "Right, to work!"

He moved out of sight and she felt herself fighting to slip back to her world, their world, any world that wasn't this one. Only the more she begged and pleaded for an escape the more present she became.

She was more aware of the straps, pinning her down and cutting into her ankles, wrists and forehead.

She felt the coldness of the room, a fan that blew icy air down onto her body, into the cuts - old and fresh alike.

A gloved hand went to thigh, just above her right knee, and her whole body began to tremble.

"Someone put on the goddamn music, this bitch is going to scream."

There was a click, followed by a hiss of white noise. Then, as heavy metal burst into the room she felt the incision on the outer side of her knee, slicing through her like ice and fire; but she left before she could react.

She was back in their world, watching in horror as the King choked from the poison someone had slipped into his wine.


End file.
